In order to facilitate communications between a main office and a branch office, or between two locations in general, businesses may use a so-called leased line between the offices. A telephone company or other telecommunications carrier usually provides the leased line, commonly a T1 line which provides the connectivity between the offices. Typically this is realized by a separate T1 line from each office to the phone company's Central Office (CO), and the CO provides a switching function to provide the connectivity between the offices.
The data communications between the offices will often use the IP protocol. If a T1 line is used, this provides a communication channel with a bit rate of approximately 1.54 Mbits/second in each direction. Sometimes in order to support higher bit rates, two or more T1 lines can be bonded together to create a single higher speed communication channel. This is done between each office and the CO, and requires special terminating equipment at each end, as well as at the CO.
Many types of Internet access technologies that are commonly available are asymmetric, in the sense that one path (e.g. the uplink) speed is slower than the other path (e.g. downlink) speed. Thus, even though the downlink speed of an Internet access line may be fast enough to support interoffice communications, the rate of the uplink may be too slow. One prior art attempt at a solution is to bond or aggregate together many such channels, e.g. ADSL or DSL lines. However, this involves installing special equipment at both ends of the link to achieve the bonding, i.e. at the subscriber end and at the CO end.
In some situations one office, the main office, will have Internet access. The other office, the branch office, may obtain its Internet access through the leased line. This limits the speed of Internet access for the branch office to the speed of the leased line between the offices, and in many cases may be inadequate compared with locally provided asymmetric access technologies that provide much faster download speeds.
In other situations, the main office and the branch office may have different types of communication channels available. For example, at one office perhaps DSL is available at higher speed relative to the another office. Perhaps in one office a cable modem service is available, but it is not available at the other office. In such situations, it is still desirable to provide a high speed and reliable communication channel between the offices.
In some situations, the main office may be in communication with more than one branch office. In this case, it is desired to use the same communication facilities at the main office to communicate with each branch office, in order to save costs.
When access lines are bonded using methods in the prior art, typically there is a requirement that all of the access lines are purchased through the same telecommunications carrier, and even that the access lines that are being bonded be terminated in same line card in the CO. This reduces reliability for the end user. If a user were able to use multiple telecommunications carriers, the diversity that results could increase the reliability of the system.
If the requirement for a component at the CO could be removed, this would enable both Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) as well as enterprises to deploy the solution without cooperation from the telecommunications carrier.